


Your Want is Bigger Than You

by PhoenixFalls



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Consulting Detective Joan Watson, Everything Is Better With Dragons, F/F, Interracial Relationship, Multi, Muse Ms. Hudson, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, POV Character of Color, Polyamory, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marthe has been keeping secrets from Joan. Joan never would have guessed <i>this</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Want is Bigger Than You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scintilla10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintilla10/gifts).



It started over tea.

Marthe had begun inviting Joan to a Chinese tea house in Midtown on Saturday afternoons after Sherlock left. She claimed it was so that she could fill Joan in on how Clyde was doing -- Joan’s new place didn’t allow pets, even the sort that were cold-blooded and housed in terraria -- but Joan suspected it was because Sherlock had asked Marthe to spy on Joan for him.

But the tea was good and Marthe was always delightful company, and Joan trusted Marthe to let her know anything she needed to know about Sherlock in turn, so it became a habit, something to look forward to each week.

And Marthe always did start their conversation with a Clyde update, so it was a very small deception.

Then the day came when Marthe opened with, “Do you think we would be able to sneak Clyde into your apartment?”

Joan just blinked at her for a moment, taken aback. “Probably? Are you taking a trip somewhere?”

Marthe looked guiltily down at her tea, long fingers sliding slowly around the rim of her cup. “I’m afraid my living situation will be changing soon, and I won’t be able to care for him much longer.”

“Oh. Is everything all right? Did your landlord raise your rent?”

Marthe looked back up quickly, shaking her head. “Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. It was just time for something different.”

“Okay.” Joan peered into her face for a moment, trying to figure out what it was that made this whole interaction feel just slightly _off_. “Good change?”

Marthe smiled, eyes far away. “Yes. I think so.”

* * *

With the loan of Alfredo's old steamer trunk and a dolly from the precinct's storage unit (borrowed with Tom's blessing), the smuggling of Clyde into Joan’s apartment went off without a hitch.

When Clyde was all set up (on the far side of Joan’s bed, so the terrarium wasn’t visible from the bedroom doorway) and chomping on some turnip greens, Joan grabbed a bottle of wine and a couple glasses and settled cross-legged into a corner of her couch, patting the cushion next to her invitingly.

“So tell me about your new place!”

Marthe took the offered glass and sipped from it, elegant as always, but her body language was all wrong, perched on the edge of the couch, limbs tucked tight and back rigid. She looked ready to bolt.

“Oh, there’s nothing really special about it. Just a loft in Queens with good light.”

“When do you move in?”

“Ah, you noticed I haven’t packed much yet. It’s not for another couple weeks, so there’s time.”

Joan sipped from her own glass, weighing her words. She very deliberately reached out to touch Marthe’s shoulder lightly. “Just let me know the date sometime soon, so I can be sure to be available to help. I’m stronger than I look, and if I spend a day carrying boxes I won’t have to go to the gym.”

Marthe gulped the rest of her wine, then stood, smiling brightly. “That won’t be necessary Joan. Kind though your offer is, I have everything under control.”

“Of course you do. I just thought—“

“It’s getting late. I’m afraid I must be off. You’ll let me know how Clyde is doing next Saturday, won’t you?” And then Marthe was pulling Joan up into a quick hug and walking out the door.

Joan set her glass absently down on the coffee table, still staring at the spot Marthe disappeared from. Something was definitely up.

* * *

Every time Joan brought it up, Marthe changed the subject, and moving day must have come and gone by now without Marthe ever asking for Joan’s help.

Sherlock would simply have followed Marthe home after one of their teas, but Joan refused to violate her trust that way.

And for all Marthe’s clear unease whenever her new living situation came up, Joan couldn’t believe that she was hiding something bad. Joan had never seen Marthe happier.

She was always lovely. In all the time they had known each other, Marthe had impressed Joan with her elegance, her poise, her grace, all the more because Joan knew exactly how hard-won those qualities could be. But Joan had never really understood, at gut-level, what all those men, those poets and painters and power brokers, had been so absolutely captivated by.

But now… Marthe _glowed_.

Her eyes sparkled and her laugh rang out, low and rich and musical. Her hands painted pictures in the air as she spoke and her hips swayed bewitchingly as she walked. There was magic to her, a breath of spring against the failing autumn sun, a warmth against the encroaching chill.

Joan knew she was being a little childish, but she wanted to know what had caused this transformation, what had brought Marthe to life in a way Joan had never been able to. But it was clearly something Marthe didn’t want to share with her, so eventually Joan started avoiding the subject as well.

Conversation still flowed freely between them at the tea house, and though Joan tried not to bring it up herself, she couldn’t help but note what Marthe told her about learning her way around her new neighborhood, trying out new restaurants, finding a new dry cleaner. Unfortunately, it had been years since Joan had any reason to spend significant time in Queens, so the references to streets and subway stops and bus lines just teased at her memory, never quite crystallizing into anything that made sense.

Eventually, one night when she was stumped on a case for Marcus, Joan mapped every place that she remembered Marthe mentioning. She felt a little uncomfortable while doing it, but she needed the answer to _some_ question, just to shut her brain up for a second. When she had covered her map in pins, she was forced to conclude Marthe was living somewhere in Long Island City or Sunnyside. It was a surprising choice, more industrial than residential, and far less affluent than Joan would have expected.

Then she pulled all the pins down, rubbing her hands over the map as if she could erase that she had gone so far. She made sure she paid for tea their next meeting.

That was the afternoon that Marthe began telling Joan about her newest historical passion: the Italian Renaissance, particularly Venice and its trade guilds and the odd place artisans like the glass-blowers of Murano inhabited in its society, captive princesses of a sort, high in status but unable to ever leave.

It was a very odd juxtaposition to Marthe’s previous passion, the history of deep sea fishing in Pacific island nations.

The days grew colder, and somewhere in there Marthe’s personal style changed. She began wearing her hair tied back all the time; her flowing blouses and skirts gave way to more form-fitting leather and even (occasionally) denim. Joan also noticed, as Marthe’s hand brushed hers over the plate of cookies, or as Joan helped Marthe into her coat, that there were new calluses on her palms and light burn scars on her arms.

When Marthe presented her with an obviously hand-blown glass vase on her birthday, everything clicked, and Joan was just left wondering what on earth it was about getting into glass-blowing that made Marthe feel like she had to hide it.

* * *

Then Marthe showed up to their next tea date with a faint bruise high on her throat, just under her jaw. It was obviously left by someone else’s mouth, and Marthe had attempted (badly) to cover it up.

Joan knew she wasn’t hiding her disappointment well, and excused herself to the bathroom to get her face under better control.

Of course. It wasn’t that Marthe was shy about revealing a new hobby; it was that Marthe was shy about revealing she had moved in with another artist, taken up her old profession as a muse after over a year of living independently.

Joan washed her hands slowly, counting to thirty. Marthe must have expected Joan to react badly to this news, and that was why she had been being so secretive. And really, she was probably right about that, given how much Joan had always encouraged Marthe to focus on learning to enjoy living on her own. Joan took a deep breath and headed back out with a smile.

When she got back to the table, Marthe was putting away a compact. She had fixed her touch-up job on the hickey, and when her eyes met Joan’s they were defiant.

Marthe opened her mouth to speak, but Joan grabbed her hands across the table, meeting her eyes with what she hoped was a knowing smirk. “So, tell me about your new artist. A glass blower? Where did you meet?”

Marthe still looked wary. “At a demonstration at the Corning Glass Museum when I took that trip upstate last winter.”

“And you’ve been seeing each other since then?”

“Since the spring, around the time you. . .” Marthe’s voice trailed off the way it always did when she mentioned Joan’s abduction or the Holmes’ brothers’ abandonment, but her fingers twisted to grip Joan’s reassuringly.

Joan squeezed back, her smile gentling. “You’ve been happy. I’m glad.”

The waitress interrupted them then, and they pulled apart to place their order.

When they were alone again, Joan waited for Marthe to again meet her eyes, then she said, “I am happy for you. And I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to hide this from me.”

Marthe’s eyes fell to the table, and she bit her lip. Joan had never seen her look so unsure. “You’ve made it clear how little you think of the role I’ve dedicated most of my adult life to. I thought it better to keep this to myself.”

Joan closed her eyes briefly, giving herself a moment to let the guilt sink in. Then she leaned back across the table to take Marthe’s hand again, coaxing her to look up.

“I was wrong. All I could see was how much Davis hurt you, how much he was hurting you even before you broke up, and how vulnerable that break-up left you. But I should have realized that you wouldn’t have kept doing it there wasn’t an upside.”

“I thought the upside was that I got to live a life of luxury.” There was old bitterness in her voice, and she pulled her hand back to set it in her lap.

“No! I’ve never thought you were just doing it for _that_. Marthe, I know how dedicated you are to the artists you’ve worked with, how much you’ve given of yourself so that what they were creating could come into being. I just. . . I thought that any relationship based on that was destined to be temporary, disposable to them even if it wasn’t disposable to you, and I thought you deserved better than that. I thought you should have something of your own, not just the scraps they were willing to give you.”

Marthe’s expression softened, though her eyes remained fixed on something in her own head. “That’s. . . not what this is like at all, Joan.”

“I know! I can see that.”

Their tea arrived, and they busied themselves with it in silence.

Joan bit her tongue on her desire to ask if she was forgiven. Marthe’s thoughts were clearly still far away not entirely happy. Joan decided a slight change of subject was a better choice.

“So the vase you gave me, that was his work?”

Marthe’s eyes widened in momentary surprise, then she gave Joan a playful little grin. “ _Her_ work. And yes. Manami let me jump to the head of her commissions waitlist when I told her I wanted to give you something to warm up your apartment for your birthday.”

“I thought you were straight!”

And there was Marthe’s laugh at last. “Why on earth would you think that?”

* * *

Surprisingly little changed in the aftermath of their conversation. Joan was braced, from her extensive experience as one of Jen’s best friends, for Marthe to begin filling every conversation with talk about her new girlfriend. But their conversations stayed on the same well-trod paths they had kept to before: Joan’s cases, Marthe’s academic fascinations, their most recent adventures in take-out. The only change was that when Joan got too close to something related to Manami, Marthe’s expression grew lighter instead of darker, and her lips turned up in a sweet, secretive smile.

Paradoxically, this made Joan more jealous rather than less.

Joan had never been good at reading which of the women she was acquainted with was also interested in women. Carrie had had to kiss her during one of their study sessions before she realized that they had been flirting for months; Rosa had come up to her in a bar and flat-out asked if she wanted to fuck; it was only after Emily was married that she admitted she had crushed on Joan when they first met. It was an odd blind spot to have when Joan prided herself on generally being good at reading people, but she knew it was there, so her failure to notice Marthe’s not-straightness didn’t surprise her.

But unlike the situation with Emily, Joan _was_ attracted to Marthe. And she had apparently missed her chance to see if Marthe could be attracted back, and she couldn’t even resent that fact because Marthe was so obviously in love with someone else. She couldn’t help but wonder if she could have been the one to put that smile on Marthe’s face if only she had taken the chance months ago.

Joan felt too conflicted to push for an introduction, but a few weeks later Marthe asked if Joan minded her bringing Manami along some time and Joan gave in to her curiosity, agreeing that that would be lovely.

And it was lovely. Manami wasn’t at all what Joan was expecting – Japanese, yes, but only half (had Joan pried and tried googling “Manami + glass blowing” she would have been tipped off by the Italian surname, but she didn't think to do that until after Manami mentioned having a website), and while Manami was petite (even shorter than Joan!) she had none of the softness, the delicacy, that her name evoked in Joan’s ear. She was stocky, thick at the waist and possessed of really impressive shoulders and arms. She was also abrupt in conversation in a way that made Joan think wistfully of Sherlock.

But she was invigorating company. She didn’t speak a great deal, apparently preferring to let Joan and Marthe carry on as if she wasn’t there; but when she did speak her observations were uniformly insightful, cutting about the people around them without ever descending into mean-spiritedness. When they first shook hands her gaze was sharp, but at the touch of Marthe’s hand to her shoulder she turned soft and fond, and as Marthe and Joan spoke Manami’s regard grew warmer, indulgent toward them both.

Joan liked her.

She didn’t come to their teas again, but she did pass the message along the following week that Joan was welcome to drop by their loft any time to entertain Marthe while Manami was working.

The first time Joan took her up on that offer, she thought she had gotten lost. The walk from the subway was longer than it had seemed when she mapped it, long enough that Joan was glad she had chosen to wear flats that morning and could pull her coat tighter against the grey and blustery day. When she passed an old sign that read “Welcome to Blissville” Joan just stood blinking at it for a moment, racking her brain for whether she had ever seen that name on a map.

But her phone continued to insist she was headed the right direction, eventually stopping her in front of a nondescript brick building on a street full of boarded-up manufacturing plants that backed onto a small creek.

The inside of the building was as warm and inviting as the outside had been cold and off-putting. At the back and putting off a lot of heat was the furnace, a surprisingly quiet exhaust fan seated in the wall behind it. The workbenches were an appealing mix of stainless steel and heavy, weather-beaten wood, and Manami snaked through the space as she worked with a confidence that was mesmerizing.

The front section, nearest the door to the street, was set up as a living space: low couch in front of a small television, a couple ottomans being used as end tables, a tiny kitchenette with an electric kettle and a rice cooker sitting on the counter. This was where Joan and Marthe generally stayed, out of danger from accidentally brushing against something capable of burning.

While Joan quickly found her favorite spot to sit during her visits, curled into the corner of the couch that had the best view of the rest of the workshop and out through the windows at the back, Marthe was in movement nearly as much as Manami, and with the same confidence. It made Joan wistful for the brownstone days, Marthe constantly fussing with Sherlock’s odds and ends with a sort of proprietary fondness, as if the act of organizing them had made them hers as well as his.

And occasionally, Marthe did breach the demarcation between living and work space, her eye catching on something out of place, or somewhere Manami could use a third hand.

Joan had never really thought about what being a muse entailed. The arts in general held little interest for her, irrelevant to her day-to-day life, maddeningly inexact. She liked to be right, but her long-ago art history prof in undergrad had always stressed that any interpretation of a piece that could be supported was valuable. And the term "muse" was itself evocative only of old paintings of people in togas and modern day upper-class pretension.

“Muse” had seemed to Joan an entirely passive role, someone who merely had to exist in the artist’s presence to serve as some sort of catalyst. But Marthe was anything but passive while Manami worked, ready to offer Manami the tool she needed next before Manami thought to ask, then coming along behind to tidy in Manami’s wake so that the next time it would be where she knew to look for it. There was more conversation than Joan expected as well: any time Marthe saw that Manami was struggling with a piece she’d interject in her softest voice, a comment about what she saw taking shape or a question about what Manami intended or even just a check-in about the line of tension in Manami’s shoulders, asking if she would be better off moving to a different bench or if Marthe turned on more light.

One day mid-November, while rain was sleeting outside and Marthe had set up a space heater in the living space because the heat from the furnace was no longer enough to keep off the chill, Joan finally asked about it.

Manami had been fighting with the next piece of the colossal chandelier she had been commissioned to create for a hotel renovation near the South Street Seaport. It was inspired by Japanese glass floats, likely explaining Marthe’s interest in deep sea fishing. Thus far every piece Joan had seen had been stunning, but Manami seemed less and less pleased with her progress every time Joan saw her.

At a lull in their conversation, Marthe looked away from Joan to watch Manami as she snorted in disgust and stomped over to the furnace to melt another attempt down. Marthe tapped her lip thoughtfully, then pushed herself up to go collect Manami in a loose hug.

They both stared into the furnace for a bit, and though Joan was trying not to listen to the low murmur of their voices, it sounded oddly rhythmic, like Marthe was reciting poetry. Manami let out a sudden “Ha!” in the middle of a line, twisting around quickly to lay a smacking kiss on Marthe’s hand. Then she grabbed her blowpipe to begin a new gather, just avoiding a glancing touch to Marthe’s still-extended arm that almost certainly would have burned. Marthe just grinned in response and made her way quickly out of danger, rejoining Joan on the couch.

Joan felt herself smile in response. “Did you get Manami unstuck?”

“For now at least.”

“I didn’t realize. . . I guess I never really thought about what exactly it is that you _do_. It’s not just standing around being inspiring -- you’re kind of a combination apprentice and critic, aren’t you?”

Martha laughed, loud enough that Manami glanced up from her work to smile over at them. “Of course! What, you thought it was just the magical powers of my bed that did the trick?”

Joan felt herself blush, but there was no bitterness, no anger anywhere in Marthe’s expression, so she figured she hadn’t inadvertently offended (again). “I mean, not exactly. . .”

Marthe’s laughter trailed off but her smile stayed, soft and warm. “A lot of what I do is work to craft the proper environment for creation: clearing clutter, organizing tools so that they’re easy to find when needed. Beyond that, much of the time I just act as a sounding board, someone Manami can talk about her pieces with, providing input on whether I can see what she intends for me to see. But sometimes she gets caught, locked down an unproductive path, and then it’s my job to find a way to redirect her, find just the right words to get her thinking something new. That’s why I read so widely. Most artists have devoted themselves to building a depth of knowledge in their field; I have a breadth of knowledge in many fields, so I can bring Manami things she’s never encountered before to build on.”

“That’s incredible.” It almost made Joan wish she had taken her childhood piano lessons a little more seriously.

Then Marthe’s smile grew wicked, and she leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “Though sex with me _is_ pretty fantastic, if I say so myself.”

* * *

And that was definitely a change from the time before Joan had found out about Manami. Joan knew she could be oblivious at times, but she was pretty sure Marthe had never flirted with her so overtly before. Nevertheless, as fall turned into winter Marthe continued to flirt with Joan, baldly enough that even Joan couldn't miss it. Mamani was around for most of it, so Joan figured it was harmless, an outgrowth of how happy Marthe was generally, but without any particular intent towards Joan. But it made it harder for Joan to remember that nothing could happen with Marthe right now. It made her ache a little every time she took the cold walk back to catch her train home, to her modern apartment with its clean lines and oppressive silence.

Joan began to pull back a bit after Thanksgiving. She was putting in extra hours at the shelter helping treat the usual uptick in flu cases in the hopes of preventing most of them from turning into pneumonia, and her family was streaming back into town for the holidays causing the usual round of visits to start back up, so it was easy to be too busy for the weekday visits she had been paying to the workshop.

Marthe didn’t ask her about it, but Joan could see her disappointment every time Joan cut their tea short or declined, with a transparent excuse, an invitation to head back to Blissville.

So when Joan got a text from Marthe the morning after Joan had successfully closed a case for a private client, she decided she’d drop by the workshop for a couple hours.

There was some kind of construction going on in their street when Joan turned onto it, so she cut through the gap between buildings to walk along the creek. When she reached Manami’s building the back door was propped open, taking advantage of the surprisingly mild 50-degree day, so Joan thought nothing of just walking in without announcing herself.

What she saw took a moment to resolve into anything Joan could make sense out of. Manami was working on a small round float, using a torch to heat the glass by hand while she did more elaborate shaping than usual. She was also wearing some sort of mask, or maybe a headdress, something that covered her whole head and changed its shape. But somehow – maybe a trick of perspective? – it appeared that the flame was coming from the mask. . .

And then Manami looked up and the “mask” morphed into her normal face with greater subtlety than Hollywood’s best special effects, and only after it disappeared did Joan think _dragon_.

“Joan!” Marthe’s voice was shocked and scared, but Joan couldn’t look away from Manami, who continued to watch Joan with much less surprise than Joan would have expected. Out of the corner of her eye, Joan saw Marthe take a step forward then pause, as if she couldn’t decide which of them to walk toward.

“Joan, let me explain—“

Manami spoke, voice droll. “Is there anything to explain, Marthe dear? Surely Joan can believe the evidence of her own eyes.”

Joan rather doubted she could, but retracing her steps she couldn’t find any point at which she could have been drugged, so either this was an elaborate hallucination or it was simply a dream, and either way all she could do was ride it out.

Also one thing, at least, was clear. “You texted me the invitation, not Marthe.”

Manami inclined her head in agreement.

That broke Marthe’s paralysis a little, and she took a few steps towards Joan. She spoke to Manami, however. “Why would you do that? I was keeping your secret well, there was no danger of Joan finding out. . .”

Manami smiled her gentle smile, putting her tools down so she could cross to Marthe’s side. “It is my secret, to keep or share as I will. Now perhaps a bit of tea will help settle all our nerves?”

“Oh, of course!” Being given a task clearly settled Marthe, and she headed back to the kitchenette with only a worried glance Joan’s direction.

Joan couldn’t quite bring herself to follow, torn between wanting to hover protectively over Marthe and wanting to keep as much space between herself and the potential threat Manami posed. Manami resumed watching Joan with that air of amused detachment.

“I want to see you do it again.” Joan surprised herself with the request. Manami just spread her lips in a smirk and complied.

The morphing was as seamless as before, and within moments Joan was standing in front of the impossible again.

Manami was wearing a tank top, so Joan could see the point at her collarbones where the skin of her chest sprouted scales in a slightly darker brown. Her neck was thicker as a dragon, and her black hair had transformed into spikes running down her spine. Her head was flat, snout long and studded with trailing whiskers, and her eyes were surprisingly soft. Eloquent.

Joan wondered if dragons could be biracial as well, or if Eastern and Western dragon lore simply played up different traits. She also wondered what those scales felt like.

“May I touch you?”

Manami inclined her head in assent. Her scales were smooth, tightly locked against each other, and slightly cool to the touch. It was pleasant.

The kettle began to whistle and Joan jumped. Manami shivered at the sound, then transformed back.

“Curiosity satisfied?”

Joan barked out a laugh. “Absolutely not.”

* * *

So Marthe was dating a dragon. A dragon who, as far as Joan could tell from her rather oblique hints, was born sometime during the Renaissance to a Japanese trader and a Venetian glassblower, both of whom were also dragons. And who had taken up glassblowing herself only in recent decades on something of a whim.

Manami was cagey on the subject of other dragons; she refused point-blank to tell Joan how many there were or even if her parents were still alive. But she would answer questions about herself.

“Can you fly?”

Manami got a wicked glint in her eye, and Marthe grabbed their mugs just in time to prevent them from being tipped over when wings burst out of Manami’s back, tearing through her shirt and extending out to a span of at least ten feet.

Joan refused to be cowed. “Is that a yes?”

Manami folded her wings back in and chuckled. “Clever. No, actually. My father can fly, but I got my mother's body, so all I can do is glide.”

"Can you control the water, call up storms?"

Manami shot a long stream of water out of her mouth and across the room into the sink. With a twirl of her finger, the stream corkscrewed prettily. "Nothing quite so vast as a storm system, but yes."

“Do you have a horde of gold somewhere?”

“Are you going to try and steal it?” Manami was still smirking.

Joan rolled her eyes. “No.”

“Then yes, though it isn’t only gold that I collect.” Her eyes flicked to Marthe.

“Is Manami really your name?”

“For now. No it is not the name my parents gave me, if that is what you’re really asking me.”

“What is?”

“Nothing that anyone human can pronounce.”

Marthe sighed mournfully, breaking their intensity a bit. “I tried to, once. Manami laughed at me and told me my ears couldn’t even hear half of it.”

Well that made some sense.

“Are you immortal?”

That turned down Manami’s lips a bit. “No. Just very long-lived.”

“Have humans ever hunted you?”

“Yes.”

“Were they hunting you because you took human sacrifices?”

Now it was Manami’s turn to roll her eyes. “No. Fish are far tastier fare.”

“But have you killed a human before?”

Marthe interjected: “Joan, really—“ but Manami spoke over her.

“Yes.”

Joan paused, studying Manami’s expression. “Was it justified?”

That turned Manami’s expression thoughtful. “I think so.”

Marthe cleared her throat in the silence that followed that. “Really, Joan, I think that’s enough for now. . .

“One more question.”

Manami patted Marthe’s thigh comfortingly, then gestured that Joan should continue.

“Why did you arrange for me to find out about you?”

Manami settled back into the couch, relaxed, even as Marthe slumped dramatically and hid her face in her hands. “Because Marthe likes you. Marthe likes you, and I don’t mind having you around, and you clearly like Marthe but started avoiding her rather than talking to her about how you feel, and she let you avoid her rather than talking about how she feels, and it was distracting. So I decided to extend you a rather dramatic show of trust, in the hopes that it would startle you into saying _something_.”

Joan just blinked, watching Marthe’s shoulders shake in what seemed to be despairing laughter. She traced through that circuitous logic a few times, wondering if it made any more sense in whatever language dragons speak.

“You exposed yourself as a creature I thought didn’t exist, making yourself vulnerable to whatever reprisals I might bring down if I decided you were a monster that needed to be killed, all in an effort to hook me up with your girlfriend?”

Manami was smirking again. “There would have been no reprisals. If it looked like you were taking it badly, I simply would have eaten you.”

“Manami!” Marthe lifted her head in order to smack Manami in the arm. Then she turned to take Joan’s hand. “Joan, I really am sorry, I never meant for you to know about any of this, and certainly not to find out this way, and for such a silly reason. I promise, you aren’t in any danger from her, and I’m not in any danger from her, and I know it’s asking a lot but I really think we ought to just put everything that happened here today behind us. . .”

Joan was pretty sure it would be smarter to go home, veg in front of the television, then sleep for nine hours before trying to pursue this any further, but her heart was pounding and Marthe was blushing and flustered and if dragons could be real then maybe this offer could be too.

“Is it silly because Manami’s wrong about how you feel, or because she’s right? Because she is right about me.”

Marthe’s eyes got very wide. “But then why haven’t you done anything? I’ve been flirting for ages!”

“Yes, and you’re dating someone else! I thought it was just playful flirting, not flirting that meant something!”

Manami pushed herself up to her feet. “Well, now that this is settled, I’m getting back to work. Feel free to do whatever, wherever, so long as you don’t break anything.”

Joan had to ask one more time. “But I thought dragons were supposed to be possessive. . . ?”

Manami ran a hand through her hair, ruffling it frustratedly. “I am possessive. But you humans have a very strange idea of what that means.” She circled back around the couch to wrap her arms around Marthe’s shoulders from behind. “Marthe is mine. But just because she’s mine doesn’t mean she can’t be yours too, and certainly doesn’t mean she doesn’t also belong to herself.”

Even Marthe looked lost at that statement. Manami sighed.

“The Marthe that is mine is the one whose hair shone bright gold and alluring against the drabness of a February day upstate. The one whose voice calls me back when I want to smash my failures to the ground. The one who thinks so far out of the box that she guessed that I was a dragon before I had decided to tell her. You cannot have that Marthe; you do not even know that Marthe, as she does not exist with anyone but me.

“But you can have your Marthe, if she’s willing. I likewise do not know her, though I’ve gotten glimpses of her when I pause my work to listen to your talks. She seems nice enough; kinder, perhaps, than mine can be. I have little interest in her, and do not begrudge anything she chooses to give to you.”

Marthe was smiling brilliantly up at Manami. “It’s just like that sculpture of yours, the one I loved so much that you gave it to me.”

Manami pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Exactly. When I made it, it was an expression of my time on Mount Rausu and in the Sea of Okhotsk, just before I was forced to flee. But when you saw it, it became a piece about your last year as Martin. My sculpture is still there in the glass, but that doesn’t at all negate the presence of your sculpture there as well.”

Joan felt like an intruder again, completely outside the understanding they were sharing. But she thought of the Marthe who had been there to listen over the phone as Joan panted through her panic, gasping out the details of her nightmares. Who unfailingly put herself between Joan and alleyways as they walked down the street. Who still checked on Joan with a glance or a brief touch any time what happened in March came up.

She thought of how all that must look to Manami, how completely opaque those interactions were. She thought about the fact that when Joan had mentioned Davis, Manami hadn’t really seemed to recognize the name.

After a moment, Manami and Marthe both turned to look at Joan. Manami asked, “Do you understand now?”

Joan felt a grin spread across her face, felt her heart kick up a beat at the answering smile on Marthe's. “I think so.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not have happened without the support of [sanguinity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity), who beta'd and held my hand through multiple fic-derailing disasters. Many thanks as well to [cephalopodqueen](http://cephalopodqueen.tumblr.com/), [beanarie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie), and the folks at [Little Details](http://little-details.livejournal.com/) for talking me through New York City geography! Any remaining errors are my own.
> 
> The title of this fic is from Catherynne Valente's poem "[What the Dragon Said: A Love Story](http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/04/what-the-dragon-said-a-love-story)." The tea house Joan & Marthe go to every week is [Radiance Tea House & Books](http://www.radiancetea.com/). Manami's name is written in kanji like this: 愛海. Blissville is [a real neighborhood in Long Island City](http://forgotten-ny.com/2005/05/in-the-shadow-of-empire/), but as far as I'm aware there is no sign announcing that you've entered it. If you'd like to see some examples of Japanese fishing floats, check out [this page](http://home.comcast.net/~4miller/gallery/gallery.html). And Mount Rausu is [a volcano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rausu) on the Shiretoko Peninsula on the island of Hokkaido; the peninsula extends into the Sea of Okhotsk.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Something about Seeing and Being Seen (Through a Glass Darkly Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7622395) by [amindamazed (hophophop)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/amindamazed)




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